Tinsmith 1865

by Sara Dahmen

  Sitting up and pulling my knees to my chest, I wait as Al pours the smashed beans into the large tin kettle along with water, and sets it over the fire. The normalcy of the morning settles my nerves. Thankfully, the coffee will not take long to boil; the tin is thin.

  Al tosses two mugs next to the fire, and places a small clay bowl just inside the ring of fire. I do not need to look to know he is planning to repair the soldering on the two pieces of crockery. They were leaking yesterday.

  “Going to try your hand at it?” He cocks his head at me, the yellow hair sticking up at all angles in the morning haze. Out of all of us, he is the brightest, the beautiful child, with dark eyes and fair hair. Mother used to say we had some Austrian blood somewhere in the family, and Al is proof of it. The rest of us are the usual mix: dark brown hair, dark black-brown eyes, swarthy skin, and built for strength and power and hard living.

  “Why should I try any metalwork when there are three tinsmiths around here?” I ask, raising my eyebrows.

  “If you learned a bit of it, there’d be four,” he intones, rehearsing an old argument. There is little need for me to learn the trade, what with Father, Tom, and Al all able to do the same work, and even Lou before he was killed. I admit I’ve absorbed more than is ladylike—it was hard not to, when the smithy was in the same space as the kitchen hearth—but I have had no hand at practicing. I have often wondered what it would be to bend the silver and gold of the tin and copper, and make it grow and sing beneath my hands. There is a type of art, a magic to it. A touch. It is a small curiosity, of course, to wonder whether I’d be any good.

  Now that I broke the burring machine, it’s obvious it is not my place to even touch part of the family trade. What a horrible smith I’d be, if I can’t even keep machinery safe in my own hands! I dread when Father opens up the box and sees the mangled handle.

  What will I say? How much apologizing will be enough?

  Al stares at the small bowl of tin, waiting and watching. The shift and slow buzz of bubbles starts in the coffee pot, filling the air between us. The beans are overly toasted, but the deepness of the brew makes my mouth water.

  “Ah … nature calls.” My brother suddenly announces his bodily functions, stands abruptly, and heads off into the tall grass on the edge of camp. I am grateful he thinks to find privacy. Some of the men around the wagons have no issue with marking wheel spokes with their own urine, just like a dog. Like Tom does.

  The coffee simmers and sighs, but I do not hear the telltale sound of a true boil. Though the drink is not ready, the tin soldering is. The small beads of tin shot run, liquefied and shining like brilliant quicksilver. Al is still not back, and I try to cinch in the curiosity yanking at my senses. Wouldn’t it be something if I might surprise him with a repaired mug? He’s teased me enough about it.

  Why not?

  Slipping over to his side of the fire, I take care to not rustle my skirts too much, so that I do not wake Tom. Surely, it is not so difficult. I have heard them talk about smith work my entire life, watched them assemble tricky orders out of the corner of my eye, and fondled the tools with my own hands when no one looks.

  Still, I have not handled the metal itself. Is there a good trick to it? An artisan’s magic? I pick up the mug closest to me and try to find where it needs repairs.

  There. Along the edge of the handle on the base. I see the fine crack in the seam, where the burr has pulled away from the bottom, and the soldering has worn away. No wonder it was leaking beer last night.

  I press my lips together and glance at Al’s small tinker kit. There’s a battered tin container of rosin flux, and I open it carefully, wondering how much should be used. Pinching a small chip, I drop it inside the interior of the mug, where any globes of excess will be easily hidden. Placing the piece on an edge of the iron grate over our fire, I dip a scoop of molten tin out, and quickly dump it into the heating body.

  Is that it? Exhilaration and tension choke my thoughts, chasing away the other worries and concerns festering in my mind. I peer into the mug, the morning fire blazing along my cheeks and my neck. Is it going to be warm today or am I just nervous? I push my lips together hard and tight, and jiggle the cup again.

  “Take it off the fire.”

  I jump. Al is at my shoulder, glancing inside the mug. He wordlessly hands over my slab of sheep wool, and I take the heated piece from the flames. Inside, the tin is wetly soft, spinning along the edges and curing into the crack.

  “Blow on it, Marie,” he instructs, his hands hovering over the cup. I send cool breath into the fresh solder, and watch it harden almost immediately. There are small chunks of leftover rosin inside, a light brown residue clinging to the metal.

  Glancing up at him, I give a little smile. “And that’s it?”

  He has a lopsided grin, an endearing trait that kept all the young women running to him back in Chicago. To me, he looks forever like the little toddler I had to chase to save from falling into the fires and touching the hot coppers.

  “That’s it. You’ve done a good tinker job.”

  “How long were you watching me?”

  “How long does it take to piss?”

  He crouches down and takes the warm mug, wiping off whatever excess rosin he can, to keep from needing to chip it off bit by bit later.

  “You don’t mind I tried it?” I feel more than a little exhilarated. Is it that I didn’t mess up something for once? Because failure didn’t worm its way into my actions? Or is it because for the first time in weeks, as I concentrate on smith work, I wasn’t buried under the strain of constant questions about our future?

  “Marie, I’ve been after you for years to try your hand at tin. You did a fine job of it. No one will be able to tell, at least not right away.” He inspects my work again, frowning slightly, but then his youthful, beardless face clears, and he sets the tinwork down, satisfied.

  “Can I … should I try it again?” I try to mask the eagerness in my voice. The euphoria of creation, even though I did nothing but fix a small piece of crockery, sits in my belly and tingles my bones. Al hears the nuance anyway, and grins saucily.

  “Can you do it before Tom or Father wakes?” We both of us know how particular they are to provide good work. They’re both sticklers for tradition, among other things. If I were a true apprentice, I would never be soldering. Instead I’d be carting fuel for the brazier furnace, slowly tracing and cutting patterns, or just cleaning pots for re-tinning.

  I don’t wait for him to reconsider, and immediately set the second mug on the iron.

  “Now you’re hasty. You don’t know where to repair, and you forgot the flux.”

  I close my eyes at my foolishness and take the handle quickly before it gets too hot. “Alright then, where do I fix this one?”

  “How are you supposed to learn the trade if I give you all the answers?”

  This mug is harder, and I feel an urgency to finish the repair work before the others poke their heads up. The sun turns the sky a soft grey blue, with a pale peach blush pulsing along the horizon. Soon the whole camp will be awake.

  Al must feel the pressure as well, because he does not wait long before reminding me to check the lap seam along the vertical ends of the body.

  His intervention is just in time. Father snaps his head out of the back of the wagon as Al is blowing on the fresh solder.

  “Is coffee being ready?”

  I nod, and stand to pull out more mugs, the clink of the tin bringing Tom awake as well. Before long, the four of us gather around the campfire, chasing away the morning chills that come with the dampness of dew and mist and uncertainty.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  9 July 1865

  Tom grinds his teeth, a sound I can hear clear across the fire. It grinds my nerves. Father ignores him, and pulls his letter from Walter in his lap and gazes at it, his fingers brushing over the words. He traces the lines making out my mother’s name, a gesture so small and intimate that I feel as though I am betraying a c
onfidence by seeing it. Looking away, I feel the same old tug at my own heart when I think of her. Josie, he had called her. His Josie.

  “Looking at the damn letter again?” Tom says, noticing the paper. “Pah. If it weren’t for that, I’d be married by now.” He turns away, and gazes across the dark plains, clearly not interested in actual conversation. He left Sonja in Chicago, with barely a chance for a soft word of love between them before Father whisked us off to the west. I wonder if he thinks of her often.

  How much of his thoughts linger on the war he fought? Some days Father talks of it, and of how glad he is Tom is home. No one speaks of Mother when he does, or how my brother missed her deathbed. Tom has no vision of her wasting from the strangling yellow fever she suffered, shortly after mingling along the river with some neighbors.

  Always social and brightly popular, Mother never turned down a chance to gossip with the other Polish in our area. But the last time, she’d come down sick, and no doctor could fix her. That much was clear by the end.

  “Well, then, my little Marya,” Father says softly, putting an arm around me suddenly, using my given name in a small gesture of affection. I fall into his steady, thick, middle, enjoying the comfort and familiarity of it. Father seems as though he will never die. He is solid and real and forever. He smells like sweat and horses, fire and cooking oil, with the heavy tang of metal always lacing his fingers. Like my brothers, the cracks of his hands are filled with the black of soot and rosin. It’s a stain that never completely cleans up, even after rigorous scrubbing.

  “Do you truly think that we will be successful?” I ask him. I wish to ask so many more specific questions. I want to know why he took us west, why the minutes after Mother’s death were filled with a frenzy of packing. I want to ask about Flats Town, and old Walter the blacksmith, and what he thinks of Tom after the war.

  Father nods. “Successful? We will be succeeding. Walter not tells me false.”

  “Likely he’s lonely for some good, lively, discussion in his own language,” I say, and Father chuckles. The tickle of it jumps under my cheek, and I shift so the button of his vest pocket doesn’t dig into my skin.

  “I am sure he will be liking that, too,” he agrees. “And it is nice to be building a town. It is better than leaving something, knowing it is broken.”

  He speaks of the diaspora of our country. He is one of many who chose to pick up the family and come over after the Uprising in ’46, right as the potato crop festered with the first wave of blight. My father, forever a tinker and a fixer, still agonizes over leaving. I think he feels it a personal failing that he did not stay and work to reconstruct Poland.

  Sometimes I wonder if and how life would be any different there. I was not yet born when Father sold his tools and snatched us out of Krakow. They had hiked overland to Bremen, choosing a ship to New York before pressing to Chicago. Two of my older siblings died on the journey over. Mother never spoke their names, and in deference to her, Father doesn’t either.

  “Is Wladisław a very dear friend, then, Father?” I refer to the letter, edging the soft paper with a rough forefinger. The sensitive question still feels like an intrusion, but Father actually answers.

  “He was,” Father amends. “We were training much side by side in Poland. He in iron, and me in tin. We worked together on many swords in our apprenticeships. That was creating a deep bond that is forging with metal. It is a partnership, a trust. I was being lucky to have him as my friend, as I do now. I was young, once,” he says, with much wistfulness in his voice.

  I bend down to kiss his forehead softly.

  “I know it, Father.”

  As I pick my way to bed, I see Al and Tom are both sleeping, their heads turned against the cold toward the fire. The flames, previously roaring for the evening meal, settle themselves to a rolling ember pile of orange. Soon the moonlight will take over, and the stars, and then the pale shivery color of night will wash over us.

  My own rest takes its time to creep over me. The camp is never completely quiet. Sometimes children cry out: a sharp, piercing, shrillness cutting the night. And there is always the shifting, coughing, and crackling of old campfires. There are murmurs of the men who are in charge of keeping watch, and soft sighs of coupling. In the fluttering shadows, I can see the undulating limbs of their passion, and I wish, someday, it might be me who is held by a man. I think I might like it.

  Would Mother have found this charming, the way she always found good in everything? She would have likely seen the adventure in it all: to strike out across the land into a more daring world filled with danger and excitement once more. She could make anything seem bright and full of laughter. Would that I were as light-hearted as she was, and as luminous. Her eyes could twinkle at Father and pull him out of a brooding mood when he worried over a customer’s intricate request. She could keep Tom from grumpiness, her tenderness toward Al was always just the right touch of mothering.

  I know I will never be as lovely as my mother, nor as flirtatious. She was dark-haired, like me, but her beauty was deep and true. Without Mother to put her polish on my manners, I feel dull and clumsy even chatting with the Cooley family or other young women my age. I wish I was like Mother.

  I can wish, I suppose. I close my eyes, and head to the edge of sleep. In the far distance, the coyotes howl their warbling yips to the sky. Their presence is soothing, if only because it confirms there are no Indian raiders sneaking up from the heaving hills that crest and roll and stretch around us.

  CHAPTER SIX

  12 July 1865

  “So?”

  He lifts up the copper boiler. “No leaks yet.”

  I allow a full smile to spread across my cheeks, and then pinch them down with my hand. My fingers are dirty and coarsely rough—worse than they’ve ever been—but Al is not helping my attempt at humility because he is smirking with something akin to pride.

  “It’s all my doing. I knew I’d be good at—”

  “What did you do?” Tom is awake, rubbing a stout, wide forearm across his forehead as he sits up.

  Al’s face stops mid-chortle, and he turns to address our older brother.

  “Made coffee.”

  “You don’t make the coffee,” Tom sits up. I wonder how long he’s been listening. I think I’ve been quiet enough, but I can’t stop a shiver of delighted fright spinning down my spine. It really is not an issue if I’ve been learning some craft on the side, but I know my Tom will think it’s foolishness and a waste of time, and likely will discourage it. He will say it is ill-bred. Or, he’ll tease mercilessly. And remind me how I’d do better to work on my cooking than play with metal. He’d be right.

  Al lays his head down on one shoulder. “How would you know who makes the coffee every morning? You’re always sleeping anyway.”

  We stand next to each other, as if ready to brace one another against any accusations, but Tom just sighs heavily. “It’s too early to argue.”

  He gets up and heads toward the tall grasses, unbuttoning his fly as he goes.

  I rummage into the food box. It is meager pickings this late into the journey, as we haven’t packed the full amount of food for pioneers going all the way to Oregon. Instead of hundreds of pounds of flour and coffee, dried beans, peas, and vinegar, we took the minimum. The tin and tools and stakes take up too much weight for more than the barest cupboard needs. If I had fresh meat, I could try to make kielbasa or kishka sausages as Mother would.

  “Marie, what’s for breakfast?” Al asks.

  “Probably porridge,” I admit, and he groans.

  The porridge itself is ready quick enough once the water is hot, though I end up overcooking it slightly. I dish out the grey slop as Father, Tom, and Al settle in, and they fall to the meal hungrily. For all their complaining, the outdoors and the heavy travel make them ready to eat near anything I make, even when it is burned.

  Father finishes quickly and hands me his dishes, which slip and rattle as I move them into the water, and the bit
of food left glides off, smooth and silky and slimy. I’m looking forward to a proper kitchen, where I might find my hand at making meals, and to have the ease of a solid hearth. There are dreams of roses and cornflowers and lily of the valley rising above the ground around my door, and geraniums in windowsills. A sentimental part of me wishes to put myrtle and rosemary in the ground in the hopes I might make my own wedding bouquet. I want a space to make into a home for everyone, as if by living in such a shell of a place, I might find some mastery in being a true homemaker.

  I think of the meager stove sitting in the back of the bed, covered in sooty blacking against the elements and rust. How will I make such a thing useful to heat and cook?

  Tom and Al polish off the last of the meal behind me, just as Father leaves to speak to Franks, the wagonmaster. Tom absently taps the edge of his knife against the edge of the tin plate as he starts on his coffee. It is an old tick of his, and much of our kitchenware has dents along the sides due to his repetitive bounce.

  “Stop doing that.” I turn and rip the plate out of his fingers.

  He raises his eyebrows. “Jezus. What’s got into you?”

  “Nothing.”

  He glances at me skeptically.

  “It’s not my place,” I mutter, “to speak up about how I feel.”

  “When has that ever stopped you from saying it anyway?”

  “Since we left Chicago.”

  “Have you found a sweetheart on the trail you don’t want to leave?” Al teases. “Worried about our arrival in Flats Town tearing you apart?”

  Tom snorts into his coffee. “Marie’s a bit young to have a sweetheart.”

  “I am not,” I huff.

  Tom stretches as he balances his empty plate on a knee. He has a hole in his left armpit. I will have to remember to mend it. Mending and sewing I am rather good at, at least. “I guess not.”